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Silvering: This property can only be applied to missile weapons. Any ammunition fired from a silvering weapon becomes alchemical silver until it hits something, allowing it to overcome the damage reduction of creatures such as lycanthropes. If an arrow, bolt or bullet is retrieved after being fired, it is normal and remains so unless it is fired again from a silvering weapon

Adamantine: This property can only be applied to missile weapons. Five times per day, on command, the weapon can transform an arrow, bolt, or bullet fired from it into adamantine. The missile retains this property until it the end of its flight, at which point it becomes normal again. A missile transformed in this manner is treated as adamantine for purposes of overcoming hardness and damage reduction.

Should adamantine be a +2 bonus, and can anyone think of a prerequisite for it other than ranks in Alchemy? Alchemy makes better sense for silvering, but I can’t find a spell that transmutes lead into gold or whatnot. Maybe a force effect…?

A woman on the radio this morning was being interviewed about people who change their jobs–I didn’t catch why exactly, but it sounded like something to do with how soul-destroying a lot of jobs are. Anyway, at one point she said, “Lucky for her she only needs about $1500 a month to cover her expenses.”

To which I respond, huh? I’m going to assume that “expenses” means ‘rent, food and utilities’ rather than ‘optional things after the basics have been covered’, but still. I knew I was poor, but I didn’t realize I was that poor.

So, D&D 3 and 3.5 have these things called feats. Feats are a fairly scarce commodity; if your character goes through all 20 levels and is not human, a fighter, nor a wizard, he’ll get a total of 7 of them. Humans get an extra feat at 1st level; fighters and wizards get bonus feats every so often that are picked from a restricted list. (Some other classes get bonus feats as well, but they’re generally either “You get this particular feat” or “You get one of these two feats”, so there isn’t much room for customization from them.) Feats fall into one of two classes: those that let you do interesting things (Dodge, Point Blank Shot, Craft Wondrous Item), and those that are something special about you (Lightning Reflexes, Toughness, Dragonblood).

Then someone came up with the bright idea of flaws. Flaws are basically anti-feats; instead of making you better at something, they make you worse. In return, you get an extra feat. Flaws are almost all of the ‘being’ category, though there are many that require you to act in disadvantageous ways as a result of the being, e.g. a flaw which requires you to drop your shield if your enemy loses his, out of a sense of fair play.

Between feats and flaws, the days of being able to completely describe your character by listing her race, class, level and stats are over. A fighter with Point Blank Shot and Quick Draw (arrow) is a different creature from one with Weapon Focus (greatsword) and Endurance, and a rogue with Deceitful and Persuasive is different from his companion with Acrobatic and Agile.

Still, I (an I imagine others) find it frustrating that ‘doing’ and ‘being’ feats are bought with the same limited currency. I don’t see how a natural talent for stealth is the same sort of thing as the ability to brew a magic potion. And it makes no sense whatsoever that you can buy the ability to brew the potion by being bad at hiding. More to the point, it makes it harder to make the character you want.

I can’t think of any way to work this out that doesn’t either overpower characters to an insane degree (whenever you’d get a feat, get one ‘doing’ and one ‘being’) or screw with the way the system works (only allow ‘being’ feats at 1st level, so that prestige classes that require two of them–say, Endurance and Iron Will–are only open to humans). Ideas?

First, read this. Then, start composing your own letter to the Kansas School Board about the glories of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Mine is in the percolating stages, but it's starting to bubble quickly.

Turns out Liam is acquainted with the guy who wanders around War in a leather loincloth and wreath of leaves–this is not the same as Freaky Tattooed Guy, I might add, who is kinda scary on top of being tacky. I’m not particularly surprised that Liam knows Loincloth Guy; Liam knows everyone.

Anyway, there he was in his “Hi, I’m a Pagan” getup, pretending to be Cernunnos or some damn thing, and he decided to show us a piece of jewelry he’d bought. It was a silver casting of a Neolithic petroglyph showing two men apparantly engaged in intercourse. At least, that’s what it looked like–two stick-figure guys, both with erect phalli, one in back of the other with his phallus rather shorter where it disappears into (or possibly behind, but it’s easy to interpret it as into) the other man.

Now, I’ve got no problem with Loincloth Guy being gay. It affects my life only insofar as that’s one fewer man who’s going to be talking to my chest. But damn, boy, that’s so tacky I’m not sure I can deal with it. Putting aside for a moment the concept of “an attempt at pre-17th-century clothing”, which is seemingly foreign to him, has it occurred to him that, cave painting or not, wandering about in public with jewelry showing intercourse is likely to be frowned on in most venues? It’s like the little penis pendants that become erect when you pull on their chains: I can think of times when they’re appropriate, but “running the register in a retail establishment” (the Cooper’s store, if you’re interested) isn’t one of those times.